Brand Disloyalty

Propaganda works on you even if you know it’s propaganda. Our brains are wired a certain way. People and systems exploit this.

As intelligent adults, we must live thoughtfully; the better to retain our rationality. Do your decisions reflect our own agency? Have you recently done a “self audit” to check?

I pondered to what degree my mind has been captured by brand loyalty and inertia. I sat my brain down and gave it a good talking to. I’d been sliding down a few slippery slopes.

I’ve already made changes; mostly involving my personal technology. I will make more.

First comes computers; the ultimate “inertia vampires”.

I spent years stifled in a corporate’s IT straitjacket and haven’t fully shrugged off the bad habits it forced on me. At work, unknowable committees I never met decreed I must use only the software and hardware they allowed. Completely by chance, these options tended to shift money to whom they (whomever they were) wanted to shift money. Often but not always, into Microsoft’s pocket. This had nothing to do with me (or anyone) doing a better job.

One example among many; Word was the word. There’s a dozen equally excellent word processors. For most purposes, any word processor is fine. Many are “free”. But, within the cage naught could be typed but what Microsoft got a cut.

There’s a persistent idea that everyone needs to work on Word because only Word understands Word files. That hasn’t been much of a limitation for decades. (There might be situations where your entire staff is “on the cloud” but that wasn’t me.) I think systems use Microsoft Office mostly because they’ve always used Office. The head honcho is statistically likely to be of a certain age and highly risk averse. People who formed their impressions back in the time of CDs (or earlier!) and don’t like change really like Word.

All that matters is if it works. The tool is just a tool. You’re reading something I typed. Can you tell what word processor used? Is it Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, Scrivener, WordPress’ GUI, my archaic bit shovel*, or a scanned piece of paper and OCR? You don’t know and you don’t care; which is the way it should be.

[Note: At this point I went off on a digression about mistreatment at the hands of corporate IT. My story is nothing special, we’ve all have suffered alike. I’m sure the magic word du jour “AI” isn’t going to improve things in the near future either. I meant every word I wrote but I was being negative. Rather than rehash old wounds, I deleted it.]

That’s all in the rear mirror. I’m a free man. I’m happily playing with Fusion 360 on my own computer for my own reasons. My computer [more deletions here] is vastly more powerful and laughably, obscenely, stupidly, remarkably cheaper than the gutless computers formerly foisted on me (all with Microsoft licenses and other similar “deals”).

I’m perfectly happy with my setup. So, of course, it had to be enshittified.

Microsoft launched (inflicted) Windows 11, to universal scorn. The update has nothing to do with the user’s needs and everything to do with a system that views users as a cow to be milked and an an information node for creepy spying.

I’ve been through this before. Microsoft crows that “AI” has been crammed into the new OS. Well yippie! I don’t need or celebrate corporate buzzwords. There’s always a new form of Clippy. (I’m not saying LLMs aren’t useful. Only that rectally inserting them everywhere isn’t in the user’s best interest.)

For hardware reasons, upgrading my desktop to Win11 is a bitch. Plus, Fusion 360 is hassling me about sticking with Win10. It’s on-line but somehow wants me to have Win11 too? The downward spiral has begun.

I prepared to get bent over and pay for another generic Windows machine I didn’t really want. Then I thought, why eat shit?

The main reason I own a Windows machine is because former employers were welded to Microsoft. That’s over and Microsoft is being a winy little cretin. Why put up with that?

I was becoming a farmed revenue source. It happens to us all. It’s a shock when you realize they’ve done it again. Especially if you feel loyalty without excellent performance, that’s a red flag. The big tell is putting a brand in your identity. “I’m a Mac guy”, “Ubuntu forever”, “Windows is the default so embrace the suck”. None of us should derive “identity” out of the tool we choose for whatever computer stuff we do. It might be inherently logical to jump from OS to OS as one improves and the other enshittifies.

So, I didn’t buy a new laptop… yet. As an experiment I pulled a tiny old Macbook Air out of the trash. It’s now running MX Linux; I think it’s good for travel. As another experiment I tinkered with Mrs. Curmudgeon’s newer but still old Macbook Pro.

Macs cost roughly 3x the price of non-Apple hardware but the OS was OK. I briefly entertained the idea of becoming a Mac person. (Is there an initiation rite?) But the newly released Neo is a joke. Close but no sale.

Also, and completely irrationally, Fusion 360 is mostly on-line but perfectly happy with an old MacOS, cranky about an old Win install, and will break out in hives over Linux? Weird.

More experiments will follow. There’s no rush. Eventually, I’ll buy or build another number crunching heavy hitter. I have a 3d modeling hobby (and wrote a 500+ page book). I need more than a toy. Will it run Win11? Mac? Linux? I’ve no idea.

That’s how I know I’m being rational. I will find the solution by looking at performance and price. I’m also wondering about Fusion 360. If it’s making an ass of itself maybe I’ll just switch to a 3d Modeling tool that’s Linux friendly.

It would feel good to cut myself free of BOTH Mac and Win.

Whoops, I geeked out and went off topic again. I meant to expand on my theory that Windows is Jeep is John Deere. I might even blather about Harley-Davidson and Mac and  Honda and how my Honda PC800 is absolutely not a Goldwing.

But I used up all my time. I’ll try again some other time.

A.C.

*When I say “bitshovel” I mean word processors so crude they aren’t even true computers. I purchased an Alphasmart Dana in 2011 and an Alphasmart Neo2 in 2016. I paid $35 for the Neo2. It still works just like it did when I bought it. They’re now going for $186 on Amazon. I think I paid $25 for the Dana and it works too. I don’t see any left on Amazon.

If you want a bit shovel but absolutely must signal your social status, you can drop $700 on Amazon for a hipsterific Freewrite. It’s a pretty cool looking gadget! It’s easily cool enough to be worth $20 more than my Neo2. Is it $665 cooler? Not a chance.